they are most ferocious brutes, and armed as
they were, and in such numbers, they could
have annihilated us with the greatest ease.
There was no help for us, therefore, but to
let the mare proceed at a walk in the rear of
the tribe, the members of which, now that we
were nearing Deobund, began to chatter
frightfully. Just before we came to the
bungalow, they left the road, and took the
direction of the temple. Fain would we have
followed them, but to do so in the buggy
would have been impossible, for they crossed
over some very rough ground and two
ditches. My friend therefore requested the
sowars to follow them, and report all they
might observe of their actions. Meanwhile
we moved off to the bungalow in
search of the owner of the cloak. The first
person whom we saw was an ayah, who was
sitting in the verandah, playing with a child
of about five years of age.

"Whose child is that ? " asked the assistant-
magistrate of the ayah.

"The Mem-Sahib's."

"What is the Mem's name?"

"I don't know," she replied, with a smile
which seemed to say that she was not
warranted in being communicative. While
travelling, few servants who know their
business will tell strangers the name of their
master or mistress.

"What is your name ? " he then inquired
of the boy, in English.

"I don't understand you," was the reply,
in Hindoostanee, accompanied by a shake of
the head. It is wonderful how rapidly the
children of Europeans in India take a cue
from a native servant of either sex. Not
always, but in very many cases, it is in deceit
and falsehood that children are first schooled
by the servants. The reader must understand
that deceit and falsehood are not
regarded as immoralities in the eyes of
Asiatics. A man or woman who, by fraud
and perjury wins a cause, or gains any other
point, is not looked down upon as a rogue,
but up to as a very clever fellow. Several
other experiments were made in order
to extract from the ayah the name of her
mistress, but to no purpose. The only
information we could learn was, that the lady
was much fatigued and was sleeping. We
said nothing about the cloak, by the way.

The servants of the bungalow—and at
Deobund there were four of them—now came
up to make their most respectful salaam to
one of the lords of the district, the assistant-
magistrate; and on questioning them, in
private, as to the name of the lady, we
were in no way successful. All that the
ayah would tell them, they said, was, that
she had come from Calcutta and was going
to Simlah. " She is a barra beebee, however,
Sahib," added the Khansamah; " for all
along the road, after she left the steamer at
Allahabad, until she ai-rived at Meerut, she
was escorted by two sowars; and when she
reaches the Saharunpore bungalow she will
find sowars ready. This is the only district
in which she has had no escort."

This was a mystery that my friend could
not unravel: why, if other magistrates had
been indented upon (as magistrates very
frequently were, when ladies were nervous and
travelling with only an ayah), he should be
omitted; especially as his district was as
dangerous to pass through as any other (not
that there was much or any danger in those
days), was more than he could understand;
and he very naturally became all the more
curious (apart from the ownership of the
cloak) to know the name of the lady who
had broken the link of her escort when she
came into his district. "Perhaps," said he
to me, " either I have or my chief has given
her husband some offence, and, possibly, he
is small-minded enough to decline asking me
to do what, after all, is only a matter of duty,
or of civility and compliment, which amounts
to pretty much the same thing. However,
we shall see."

My friend now mentioned to the Khansamah,
a very old but very active and intelligent
man, the sight we had seen on the road
—the regiment of monkeys.

"Ah! " exclaimed the old man, " it is about
the time."

"What time?"

"Well, Sahib, about every five years that
tribe comes up the country to pay a visit to
this place; and another tribe comes about
the same time from the up-country— the hills.
They meet in a jungle behind the old Hindoo
temple, aud there embrace each other as
though they were human beings and old
friends who had been parted for a length of
time. I have seen in that jungle as many as
four or five thousand. The Brahmins say
that one large tribe comes all the way from
Ajmere, and another from the southern side
of the country, and from Nepal and Tirhoot.
There were hundreds of monkeys here this
morning, but now I do not see one. I
suppose they have gone to welcome their
friends."

The sowars who had been deputed to follow
the tribe now rode up, and reported that, in
the vicinity of the old temple, there was an
army of apes—an army of forty thousand!
One of the sowars, in the true spirit of
Oriental exaggeration, expressed himself to
the effect that it would be easier to count the
hairs of one's head than the number there
assembled.

"Let us go and look at them," I suggested,
"and by the time we return the lady may be
stirring."

"But we will not go on foot," said my
friend; " we will ride the sowars' horses. In
the first place, I have an instinctive horror of
apes, and should like to have the means of
getting away from them speedily, if they
became too familiar or offensive. In the
second place I do not wish to fatigue myself